Dr. Palmer’s Larry Upshur shoots while Princeton High School’s Matt Hart defends during a game on June 19.
A lot has changed for Princeton Recreation Director Ben Stentz and Assistant Recreation Director Evan Moorhead over the last 25 years, but one thing has stayed consistent: the Princeton Men’s Summer Basketball League.
The two joined as high school students in its first year, continued to play through college, formed their own teams and eventually took the league’s reins themselves in the late 1990s.
“There’s this crazy timeline of our involvement and different jobs, different responsibilities,” Stentz said. “We estimated that there have been about 1,500 games over 25 years, and there’s no way that there has been more than 10 percent of those games that at least one or both of us were not present for. We have seen almost every game, which says one thing: we have no lives. We enjoy basketball.”
Former Princeton High School varsity basketball head coach Doug Snyder first had the idea for the league while looking for a way to keep his team in basketball shape during the offseason. He decided to take matters into his own hands after former players also approached him in search of a place to play summer basketball. Soon after, Snyder and a handful of recreation department employees founded the Princeton Men’s Summer Basketball League.
Stentz and Moorhead both played under Snyder in the league while also working miscellaneous jobs for the recreation department.
“Little did we know that all these years later, we’d still be here and we’d still be a part of this basketball league,” Stentz said.
The league fielded around three teams for the first few years, but it eventually started to grow. Now, Moorhead said, they generally hover around 10 squads consisting of players 18-30 in addition to the one PHS team that is still allowed to play.
Stentz and Moorhead begin working on the league in February or March of each year. They start by reaching out to team managers to gauge interest and get a feel for how many teams are returning.
Then, they put together a preliminary schedule and take on tasks like getting jerseys made, contacting officials and refurbishing the Community Park courts, where teams play every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Once the season gets started in June—this year, the first games were held June 10—Stentz and Moorhead attend every matchup.
“That’s the real labor of love for us,” Stentz said. “We’re not just organizing. We’re at the courts three nights a week from 6:45 to 10:15 after working our real jobs all day. That’s not always easy to do. There are plenty of times where we’re just exhausted, but it’s hard for us not to do it. It just became part of our brains.”
The community has taken to the league, as well.
“If you come down here on any given night, you might have anywhere between 50 and 250 people watching,” Moorhead said. “Families, kids, seniors, people who look forward to this league year in and year out, people who played in the league and now maybe don’t play but enjoy coming back and watching. I think that as it evolves, it’s one of the best examples of a real community-based program out of everything that we do.”
Stentz agreed, calling the community presence the “hidden benefit” of the organization.
“You can enjoy the program and the league, whether you’re playing or not,” he said. “There’s not a lot of things we do where that’s the case. Most things, you’re either doing it or you’re not doing it. There are the participants. There are the spectators. The real benefit of the league is that it brings those people together, whether they love basketball or not. It’s a chance to see your neighbors, see old friends.”
Stentz remembers the exact moment he realized the league had grown beyond the original players. He and Moorhead served as announcers during games, and Stentz adopted “You gotta finish” as a catchphrase following missed dunks or layups. It became popular within the league, so they had shirts made.
“I was driving around town, and I saw this little 6-year-old kid walking down the street with one of our shirts on,” Stentz said. “I turned the corner, and I saw a 90-year-old woman wearing one. I thought, ‘We’ve arrived. They’re wearing our shirts.’ Still to this day, I’ll see somebody and they’ll be like, ‘You gotta finish.’ That’s when I knew we had kind of spread beyond just the people who were playing.”
The league has also gone beyond Princeton as a whole.
“There was a point in the early years where it was about making a place for for the local guys to play,” Stentz said. “As it grew, it started to attract guys from the county who weren’t necessarily Princeton people, but that was good for the league because it allowed it to expand. We were able to get it to that point where people considered us to be the best summer league in the region, but we still had all of these local guys playing. We were able to meet two goals without pushing one aspect out.”
Moorhead said the officiating and setting allow the league to thrive, but the competition is what has really kept it going.
“It helps that the product on the court has been consistently good over the years,” he said. “The games are competitive, and the players take them very seriously. They want to win. There are no prizes or money at stake. It’s purely pride, but they still play hard.”
Former player Darius Young remembers the high level of play very fondly.
“The competition was always there,” he said. “It always meant something to be a champion in that league, and I think it still does. You know what it means to get to the championship, how hard it is to get through the playoffs. For the older guys, it means a little bit more because they’ve tasted that, and they know.”
The way the league has panned out was something Moorhead said he and Stentz never saw coming as PHS students 25 years ago. Many current players were not born during the league’s formative years, and Stentz and Moorhead even coached a bunch of them in youth leagues.
“It’s almost like the cycle of life down there, watching the kids grow up,” Moorhead said. “They go on to play for the high school team, and then they get teams in the men’s league. We both grew up in this town, so we feel particularly tied to the community. We were both basketball players in this town, so it just kind of adds to the connection. It’s fun to watch the evolution. Back then, we never thought it would grow to what it is today.”
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